The usual energized roaring welcomed me back to my room that day. Except, the moment the dragon girl saw me, she rushed out the door at an incredible speed. Then came a series of powerful vibrations from the next room. It didn’t seem like I would get a chance to practice releasing my essence tonight either.
✦ ✦ ✦
The next day, three children stepped forward to enact her punishment. They were, of course, those who occupied the room next door. Out of all of them, Tiger’s face bore the worst scars. It was clear that the dragon girl had carried out a very thorough retaliation. He was clenching his teeth—he must have been livid. It was like he hadn’t expected her to go after him following the beating he gave her, despite having seen how she snapped at the instructor day after day.
“The tigerborn may give her twenty strikes. The others, ten.”
The number had gone up.
Tiger brought the sword down repeatedly, utterly enraged. “Hmph! Take that! Hah!”
The dragon girl endured it, apparently not in the mood to be making any noise today. She merely glared at him in silence. Her golden eyes simmered with a rage powerful enough to explode at any moment. For a second, that seemed to frighten Tiger. But allowing his fear to show would have been far too shameful, so he let out a roar and replaced it with anger, bringing the sword down once more.
✦ ✦ ✦
She howled, flying from the room as soon as I entered. This was turning into a test of endurance between them. The dragon girl didn’t come back until it was quite late. My guess was that Tiger had moved to a different room. It still didn’t seem like I would be able to meditate. I was growing impatient and frustrated.
✦ ✦ ✦
Ten children stepped forward this time for the dragon girl’s punishment. Among them were my former roommates: the demonborn and the catborn. To me, it confirmed that Tiger and the gnome had changed rooms in an attempt to defend themselves. She must have assaulted anyone she could find when she went around in search of them, hence the increase in victims.
Thus, the spectacle took even longer.
As for essence training, pretty much all of the children had now learned how to charge it. Anxious to learn as quickly as possible, I meditated every day...to zero effect.
✦ ✦ ✦
The next day, the punishers also numbered ten. They weren’t exactly the same as before, however. It seemed she was starting to forget faces.
✦ ✦ ✦
The next day it was eleven.
✦ ✦ ✦
Then it was thirteen.
✦ ✦ ✦
Then twelve.
✦ ✦ ✦
Fifteen.
✦ ✦ ✦
Twenty.
✦ ✦ ✦
On and on it went until one day I returned to the room to find her quiet. The room was filled with the cloying stench of blood, making me gag and cover my mouth. The bucket I had filled for her the day before was more blood than water. She was curled in the center of the room, her body covered in wounds. She seemed to be sleeping to recover. It looked like Sister had stopped bothering to tend to her injuries altogether. I went to empty the bloody bucket.
On my way, I ran into Tiger. He was walking toward me, surrounded by four or five others. When he saw me, his lips twisted into a scowl before twisting further into a crude smirk. He intentionally knocked his shoulder into mine as he passed.
Following him, his entourage muttered, “Hardhead.”
That was what people had been calling me recently. I knew full well that it wasn’t an affectionate nickname.
In the end, the dragon girl remained asleep the whole day.
✦ ✦ ✦
The next day, fifteen children stepped forward to punish her. She hadn’t attacked a single person last night. She had just curled up in her bed, unable to move. I realized then what was happening. How clever.
The root of her confidence was her raw strength. By breaking that, the adults hoped her pride would be crushed in turn. But she had continued to fight back. And so, in order to instill in her the idea that she was no better than the other children, they encouraged the kids to take revenge on her.
Or so I once thought.
In truth, the adults had designated her as a slave to this kingdom of children. She was there for the infantile citizenry to vent their resentment. Her extraordinary resilience made her the perfect sandbag in the grown-ups’ eyes. Her toughness, the speed at which she recuperated, and her lofty pride just made her seem all the more wretched.
She was no longer an enemy of the elite. She was their tool.
✦ ✦ ✦
I had started meditating in the mornings before roll call. I had become more of an early bird and now was able to wake up before sunrise. At long last, I was the only kid unable to charge my essence. I was winning fewer and fewer bouts during combat training as a result. That said, there were lots of times when I won using purely physical techniques, so I had around a fifty-fifty win rate. If I stopped winning altogether, I would probably find myself without a place here anymore. It would be one thing if they banished me, but if they decided I needed to be “dealt with” to stop me from talking, I wouldn’t have the means to fight back. That was yet another reason I needed to learn to charge my essence.
As I finished up my meditation, I picked up the breathing of someone else in the room. I could see her curled up in the middle of her mattress as she slept.
✦ ✦ ✦
After roll call, the children went to the dining hall to shovel down their food. This community ran on two meals a day: breakfast and dinner. The purpose of the former was to give us all the energy we needed until the evening. Sister took her meals with us too, but she was afforded a much fancier plate; it was loaded with meat. This was probably meant as another reminder that the adults were our superiors. These obvious differences in treatment acted as subliminal messages meant to instill a sense of inferiority within us.
✦ ✦ ✦
After breakfast came the dragon girl’s punishment at the training grounds. She took it silently now, having suffered through it every day for an entire month. It wasn’t that she chose to stay quiet; she simply wasn’t capable of making a sound. During one of the sessions, she had let out a roar that pierced the eardrums of all who surrounded her. Every morning since then, she had been made to drink a powerful acid that burned her throat. Not only that, but the instructor had stripped her fingers of every claw. When they grew back, he pulled them off again—for “safety’s sake.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Around twenty children took part in the daily punishment. By now, most of our cohort probably had a turn. At first, only the boys swung the sword, but now it felt like mostly girls were doing so. There might have been an ugly jealousy there, a desire to destroy something beautiful.
I never once participated. Not out of any sense of morality, but rather for the sake of self-preservation. We shared a room. She knew who I was. One wrong step and I would end up getting beaten worse than Tiger. That was why, if the adults ordered me to, I would swing that sword as hard as I could to save my life. I wouldn’t even hesitate.
With her burned throat and her missing claws, she looked more wretched than ever.